I've just come back from Strawberry Fair in Cambridge (England). (The clicky thing there will tell yoiu more about it, with pictures and all - but you've missed it for this year anyway.)

Anyway the thing is, one of the things happening around was a big samba band. Funny costumes, funny hats, lots of painted faces, drums being banged. All doing the Brazilian bit. Great stuff. And looking at them it came over me how totally Engish the whole thing was. The self-mocking quality, combined with a real committment to gettingbit right. And the look of the whole thing, the way they moved.

I am pretty sure there was no intention to draw on the traditions of Morris Dancing and Molly Dancing - but it was as if they'd reinvented it somehow, out of the atmosphere around them.